Vitamin B12

[Tanuki]

Vitamin B12 cannot be reliably obtained from a purely plant-based diet.

So where do you get it? Fish?

[Bruce Paine]

Tanuki,

Where do vegan macrobiotics get Vitamin B-12?

It's obvious!







From other vegan macrobiotics!





Actually it all depends what you believe!

I imagine that most longtime macrobiotic people would agree with Alex Jack who says,, that vitamin B-12 can be "obtained from tempeh, miso, shoyu, (natto), and other fermented soyfoods; kombu, nori and other sea vegetables; and naturally processed pickles and sauerkraut! It is also known to be found in abundance in animal foods and in healthy individuals can be synthesized in the small intestine. B-12 deficiency causes pernicious anemia. Stored in the liver for three to six years, B-12 is depleted by coffee, alcohol, tobacco, antibiotics, birth control pills, liver diseases, chronic disorders, and injury or stress," as he has written in Let Food Be Thy Medicine : 750 Scientific Studies and Medical Reports Showing the Personal and Planetary Environmental Benefits of Whole Foods.

Others like Christina Pirello in My Vitamin B12 Dilemma believe in supplementation for a vegan macrobiotic diet.

Call me a sexist but I'm a few times a week fish eating macro who's attracted to vegan macrobiotic women and if anyone feels the need to be vegan and also do supplements, more power to them, though if I were vegan I would put my trust in organic naturally processed whole foods, until I felt the need to do something different!.

Thank you, very much.

Bruce Paine

[Tanuki]

Thanks Bruce,

As Christina says in her article, there is actually no significant B12 in fermented foods. The B12 supppsedly found in other plant foods such as spirulina and tempeh is not real B12 isn't real B12, but a B12 "analogue". That is, it looks like B12 but isn't the real thing. So it's misleading when tempeh manufacturers, for example, claim that their product is "high in B12".

I don't think there's anything wrong with supplements, but I'd prefer not to take them, so I'm having small amounts of dairy, eggs and fish. Mussels are especially high in B12 but I don't think they're recommended in macrobiotics.

Anyway, people can believe what they like but science shows that we can't get B12 from plant foods.

[Klara]

Just wondering, Tanuki. Why do you also include dairy and mussels? Isn't fish a couple times a week enough?? Did you actually get tested to see if you're lacking B12??

Klara

[Bruce Paine]

I'm not anti-science, I'm more pro nature!

Without science, we would not have all these seemingly miraculous devices and machines that we take for granted every day but then again science or at least science as most people know it, is not everything!

Take the concept of Biological Transmutation for example.

Louise Kervran (the author of Biological Transmutation) proved that elements can change into other elements via biological processes!

He proved that Potassium can be transmuted into Calcium within the biological process of germinating seeds and proposed that biological transmutation can and does take place within human beings!!

What if biological transmutation takes place within the human body?

If that's true, do we need to consume supplements to receive all the nutrients and nutrition needed for our bodies in addition to our daily diets?

What if our balanced macrobiotic macrobiotic diets give us all the nourishment that we need, and the body supplies everything else that is needed?

I stopped taking supplements almost 35 years ago (sometime before starting macrobiotics and reading Healing Ourselves:A Book to Serve As a Companion in Time of Illness and Health by Naboru Muramoto with Michel Abehsera where I was first introduced to the concept of Biological transmutation) and I'm still here and relatively viable!

Can we trust our bodies, our foods, our diets and nature to take good care of us?

Isn't that really what macrobiotics is all about?

Thank you, very much.

Bruce Paine